A soldier now stationed in Iraq detailed his experiences with DRM, saying his experiences with the technology have ranged from “annoying to unforgivable,” though he called Valve’s Steam platform “pretty awesome” when it came to working with deployed military personnel in order to ensure that they have access to their games.

The unnamed soldier on his experiences with other companies and services:

I've had hit and miss success with some of the other download companies. Any kind of game that tries to call home, though, is generally more of a problem than it is worth. Especially ones that try to resolve your IP address with your version/purchase location.

On-base Internet connectivity can very spotty and expensive, adding to the headache of playing a game with DRM that phones home constantly. The soldier said that the “government sponsored Internet” features severe bandwidth caps, while civilian Internet is extremely expensive—the soldier pays $150.00 a month for a 192K connection.

Ars added its own thoughts on DRM:

This sort of DRM makes sense for a world where every device is always connected to some magically open and always-on Internet connection. That world is a very long way away, so by requiring an Internet connection at all times to play a game that isn't online itself is simply alienating an audience.

whether they play games or not over in the war zones, my brother was over there in Afghanistan 2 yrs ago for 15 months & said the internet sucked. Even playing games there sucked b/c of their internet. But that's when he would play the PC games on disks after buying them from the PX.

"It's better to be hated for who you are, then be loved for who you are not." - Montgomery Gentry

"It's better to be hated for who you are, then be loved for who you are not." - Montgomery Gentry

DRM dose not need absolutes but for the individual registration key, you can have the online accounts and interconnectivity and all that junk and have it randomly and passively scan for illicit keys then lock the thing down linking you to a place you can buy a discounted key from select vendors(either a steam version key or a retail key from the games maker). When you have to many absolutes or vagueness siding with the side that can afford to sue you into the ground or dismiss you as to small(yes this is a dig at copy right as well) you wind up with a imbalanced and top heavy system that labels everyone as guilty regaurdless of fact or reason.

Ubisoft would probably try and spin this by saying it's GREAT for soldiers since they can (possibly, stable net connection pending) play Screed 2 over there, come home, and BE ABLE TO ACCESS THEIR SAVE FILES! WOO! (Assuming of course, the net connection is stable enough for them to even GET a save file. And Ubisofts server works from the middle-east, and lets them play in the first place.)

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I LIKE the fence. I get 2 groups to laugh at then.

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I LIKE the fence. I get 2 groups to laugh at then.

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ZippyDSMlee: .....win8 hates any left over hidden install partitions from other version of windows....only waste 5 hours finding that out...its ahrder than you think keeping up with 4 or 5 HDDS......03/03/2015 - 4:44am

Matthew Wilson: I am going to pax east, any games you guys want me to check out?03/02/2015 - 11:23pm

ZippyDSMlee: No one remembers the days of Cinemagic and Cynergy eh? :P, meh even MGS is getting to film like....03/02/2015 - 8:44pm

MechaTama31: I was about to get all defensive about liking Metal Gear Solid, but then I saw that he was talking about "cinematic" as a euphemism for "crappy framerate".03/02/2015 - 8:29pm

prh99: Just replace cinematic with the appropriate synonym for poo and you'll have gist of any press release.03/02/2015 - 5:34pm

Monte: Though from a business side, i would agree with the article. While it would be smarter for developers to slow down, you can't expect EA, Activision or ubisoft to do something like that. Nintnedo's gotta get the third party back.02/28/2015 - 4:36pm

Monte: Though it does also help that nintendo's more colorful style is a lot less reliant on graphics than more realistic games. Wind Waker is over 10 years old and still looks good for its age.02/28/2015 - 4:33pm

Monte: With the Wii, nintnedo had the right idea. Hold back on shiny graphics and focus on the gameplay experience. Unfortunatly everyone else keeps pushing for newer graphics and it matters less and less each generation. I can barely notice the difference02/28/2015 - 4:29pm

Monte: ON third party developers; i kinda think they should slow down to nintendo's pace. They bemoan the rising costs of AAA gaming, but then constantly push for the best graphics which is makes up a lot of those costs. Be easier to afford if they held back02/28/2015 - 4:27pm

Matthew Wilson: http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/02/28/the-world-is-nintendos-if-only-theyd-take-it/ I think this is a interesting op-ed, but yeah it kind of is stating the obvious.02/28/2015 - 2:52pm